Yeah this sounds to me like "game is too simplified" just is meant to mean "please re-add all the menial busywork that had 0 complexity or difficulty and was just a long, annoying, checklist to go through but it filled my evening and needed no thought"?

And even that we still have! Farm mats for buff food! Craft buff food! You can still do this menial work. We even still got gear-checkpoints like specific amonts of SKS or SPS. You can do it!